Tag Archive for 'ecc'
I’ve just finished getting together my photos from the ECC Airpocalypse Weekend.
The whole weekend was superb - a great opportunity to ride some world-class rides, meet some new people and say hello to all the familiar faces.
After a hiccup at the gate down the woodland walk (someone forgot the key) which meant we missed most of our ERS on Nemesis, Alton Towers went all-out to make it up and treated us very well on Saturday.
We had a nice lunch in the hospitality marquee, which also featured a chance to see the BBC Inside Out documentary which has been made about a few of the club members this year. It was also announced that, to say sorry for the morning, Alton were giving us a half hour ERS on Spinball Whizzer at the end of the day.
Disaster almost struck when Rita - our real evening ERS coaster - went down towards the end of the day. Alton’s team did everything possible to ensure it was back up and running for us, and even let us into the machine room to see the behind-the-scenes mechanics of the ride. It turned out that, not only were we the first group to privately ride Rita, but we were also the first people to ever ride her in the dark.
To top off the day, Alton even laid on a couple of shuttle buses to return us back to the car park, saving us that long plod back on foot.
Sunday was the day I’d been dreading - it played host to the morning ERS on Drayton Manor’s Apocalypse. I’m no big fan of drop towers let alone 180ft ones, so this was going to be a challenge.
Thankfully, everybody made it easy for me, telling me that I didn’t have to ride it if I didn’t want to.
Over coffee, it was announced that there would be a special “Apocalypse Virgin’s Ride” as the first ride of the day. B*&@#�ds - I’m never gonna forgive you.
Somehow, I was gently persuaded (read: physical manhandled) into riding not just the sit-down, but also the stand-up side. Fellow Apocalypse-virgin-compadre Richard SC and I decided that we might as well complete the set (mad? us?) and rode the “terrifying” stand-up floorless side too - we even got Richard B to join us. Stand-up proved way scarier.
Lunch was outstanding: a full three-course meal including a full Sunday roast. Park MD Colin Bryan was on hand to give us an update on the park and answer questions.
Our evening ERS was on G-Force, Drayton’s new coaster for 2005. It’s a great little coaster which does a lot in its compact size, but it has an annoying problem with its restraints: they get progressively tighter throughout the ride, leaving it difficult to breathe by the end (or maybe that was just all the running around the queueline and up the stairs for an hour!)
Another brilliant ECC trip - can’t wait for Yorkshire in two weeks!
I spent a spectacular couple of days at Alton Towers and Drayton Manor with the ECC last weekend. Photos and trip reports should be online sometime over the next few days.
In the meantime, I’d like to say that if you see any pictures with a person looking like me in them - its not me, especially if they’re doing something very silly!
Update: Photos and some trip remarks now online
Photos from the weekend are appearing around the Net - here are the ones I know about so far:
Anybody know of any more? Post the link in a comment below!
Day 2: Chessington World of Adventures. The weather forecast was for a warm sunny day, although looking outside the rain-splattered window at 6am you wouldn’t have thought so. By 9am, however, the cloud had cleared leaving a nice bright morning. (The reason I was up so early even though the park is only a 10 minute drive from my house: Tom tipped me off about a spectacular episode of Doctor Who which I obviously had to watch as soon as possible.)
This morning started with a 30 minute ERS on Vampire. If Nemesis Inferno makes an excellent evening ride, Vampire is perfect in the morning. As usual, Chessington’s staff were top notch, even sticking a sign up at the ride exit saying “Vampire ♥ The European Coaster Club”. Below, in brackets: “(especially Justin)”.
![[Cafe Nero card]](http://www.jamessalter.me.uk/personal/blog/images_upload/nero.jpg)
Chessington have finished “fixing the fun” on Rameses Revenge, giving us the opportunity to ride - my first chance in 2005. I ended up on the end of the front row (I’m not stupid, although see below). It was an OK ride, nothing special, although I don�t remember it wobbling sideways quite so much in previous years.
We had a couple of interesting ride takeovers later in the morning: We proved that Flying Jumbos wasn’t designed to lift a whole load of heavy adults! I expect they’ll be quite a few embarrassing photos hitting the Net over the next few days.
After lunch we watched all three animal shows, which turned out slightly different to normal: You could tell by the slight panic in his voice that the parrot flew slightly further than the handler was expecting during Birds in Flight, the keepers descended into fits of laughter in the Penguin Presentation and the sealions are in season so were rather uncooperative come the Sealion Show. Methinks somebody may have had a rather late night with a few drinkies.
Much like yesterday, I spent most of the day attracting water from all directions. I’m developing a special talent for it - I might even see if somebody in the university wants to experiment on me. Of course, Hywel and the Bubbleworks is a dangerous combination for anybody. I did manage to stay relatively dry on our fully laden Dragon Falls boat (Tom, Hywel, Tom, Chris and me). Alright, so Tom and I cheated by chickening out and ducking into the front of the boat: I still got wet shoes somehow!?! I must definitely talk to somebody about my magnetic water gifts…
![[Fury FastTrack]](http://www.jamessalter.me.uk/personal/blog/images_upload/furyfasttrack.jpg)
Before park close we had time to take in the Dodgems and Runaway Train. Did you know dodgems cars go sideways? Well, if you’re ganged up on by four other people then they do. Don’t worry, I will have my revenge - just watch your backs. There will be other trips. ![[:p]](images/smile/smile17.gif)
Our day ended with an hour ERS on Dragon’s Fury. After our preliminary research last year, we’ve perfected the art of loading the cars. Huge thanks must go to the ride ops who let us load cars with three, two, or even one carefully placed people in order to achieve maximum spinning. I’m not sure whether they were winding us up when they told us to lean out to the right for the duration of the ride, but it seemed to work. Hey, it wasn’t exactly the only time during the day I looked a prat, so why worry?!?!
And so the weekend came to an end. Even though it was only my second trip, I already feel right at home. I met a fantastic bunch of people, had a fantastic time and still have a smile on my face (and a strange aching sensation down my left side!). Big hellos to Paul, Margaret, Richard, Owen, Tom, Hywel, Justin, John, Mark, Simon, Mick, Wendy, Chris, Tom, Chris, David, Malcolm, Carl and everybody else I met, talked to and rode with. Lastly, an enormous thank you has to go to John and the rest of the team for working so hard to organise such a brilliant trip - I can’t wait for Alton/Drayton in September!
Photos of today are available here.
This was only my second trip with the ECC, the first being the trip to Thorpe and Chessington last year, but I can already see it being near impossible for me to get trip invites in the future and throw them away: ECC trips are full of fun, laughs, coasters and good friends.
![[Thorpe Park ticket]](http://www.jamessalter.me.uk/personal/blog/images_upload/thorpeticket.jpg)
Our weekend started with a day at Thorpe Park. After a bit of a wait around the entrance, we were in for our 30 minute ERS on Rush. It was originally planned that we’d also have Slammer available, but it was still being worked on following its “minor difficulties” recently.
Rush is a ride I’ve been eager to try out for a while. Due to its opening half way through the season, I�ve been able to follow construction and testing during park visits this year. A couple of weeks ago I tried to get a ride on the Sunday of the supposed opening weekend, but ended up being disappointed. So, was it worth the wait?
Well, Rush does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s supposed to be a giant swing, and that’s what it is: a large swing. I was expecting it to have more of a punch and it was disappointing to only have one full-height swing. As it stands, you can quite comfortably hold a conversation throughout the ride, as Paul and I proved. Apparently the ride program will be extended soon, which should help a lot. I think I�d have been a bit annoyed with the ride experience if I’d queued for an hour. Ah, the joy of an early morning ERS! No waiting in lines, no need to contend with the less desirable members of society. Just a bunch of coaster enthusiasts having a good time.
After the ERS we spent the morning riding the usual candidates (the following is not necessarily in chronological order!): We had a couple of rides on Vortex, but annoyingly ended up at the bottom of the swing both times.
At one stage I managed to end up in a log flume boat with (in order from back to front) Tom, Hywel, Owen and Paul, then me in the front. I’m not sure for exactly how much of the big drop we were actually in contact with the trough, but it wasn’t much. Nor was I expecting quite so much water to end up in my lap after coming over the front of the boat! Just as I was drying out, we took a ride on Tidal Wave, which I think proved to be drier than Loggers Leap.
I was “allowed” to ride Detonator, oh joy of joys, courtesy of Margaret and Tom gently “encouraging” me onto the ride. There’s something weird about Detonator. I have a consistent hatred of it, for all but the couple of seconds of freefall where it becomes my favourite ride in the park. After getting off and looking back up the tower, however, I swear I’ll never ride it again. Every time.
![[FI2 badge]](http://www.jamessalter.me.uk/personal/blog/images_upload/fi2badge.jpg)
The group split and a few of us went to watch the stunt show. Mick (renamed Julian) was one of the volunteers at the beginning of the show. They seem to have removed the stupid bouncing over the car section, and there was no fire dive today. It was replaced with some random diving from the pool side and about two thirds of the way up the dive pole. Still much better than Spider-Man though!
Lunch time eventually crawled around at 2:30, so with stomachs rumbling we made our way over to Bush BBQ to be greeted with a “20 minute wait for food”. For anybody who hasn’t been to a Tussauds park, you need to know that they don’t use GMT/BST as a standard time measure. Instead, Tussauds Time determines everything from estimated queue times on information boards, park opening times, closing times and FastTrack entry times. In fact, every park operation vaguely time-related. As a rough conversion, every Tussauds minute is equal to about two everyday Earth minutes. Therefore, it was hardly surprising that our food didn’t arrive until 45 minutes later.
We passed the time watching a couple of ducks (a possible alternative food source?), wondering whether the staff had travelled to the farm to slaughter a couple of cows and were now making there way back with them on the Canada Creek Railway, and watching Slammer testing.
After consuming erm, what do we call it? Following the concept of Brunch being Breakfast and Lunch, maybe Linner?? Anyway, whatever it was called, after we�d eaten it we spent the rest of the afternoon on a few more rides, including quite a nice program on Samurai. Its still not as intense as when it lived down the road at Chessington, but its slowly getting there.
Our evening ERS began with 15 minutes on Slammer (delayed from the morning), before moving to Nemesis Inferno for the rest of the session. Slammer seems back to its usual self, and didn’t deem it necessary to enhance its ride experience by dismantling itself and getting stuck upside down for half an hour.
Inferno was spectacular. There’s nothing like looking over a deserted park from the top of the lift hill. I’m not sure where everybody got to, but the trains were running around only �-� full. We ended up just staying on and swapping seats. Even the front row was relatively queue-free. Close to the end of the hour, queuing for the front row involved sitting in the 2nd row on the previous ride!
The day was rounded off when a few of us met up for a meal at the Monkey Puzzle. Apparently the chef has special psychic powers - the food arrived within a couple of minutes of ordering. Maybe they need to share their secret with the Bush BBQ staff!
Photos of today are available here.